Not currently on any branch + git commit + checkout when not in any branch. Did i loose my changes?

Question

I was not currently on any branch when I commited my changes. I didn't really notice the message and checked out another branch.

How can I retrieve my changes? I can't merge or checkout, since there is no branch to merge from.

Answer 1

You can use git reflog to get the commit hash of the commit that you did while in "no branch" ( a detached HEAD) and merge that in to the branch that you are currently in ( master maybe)

Something like git merge HEAD@{1}

You can also git rebase -i and "pick" the commit you want from the reflog.

Answer 2

I was in a similar state after committing some work:

Lilith:Manager KelSolaar$ git status

Not currently on any branch.

I issued a git log to see my last commit hash:

Lilith:Manager KelSolaar$ git log

commit 49984303037e970d637161c3154b7fd7d6ae3a43 Author: KelSolaar Date: Wed Oct 5 22:41:31 2011 +0100

Introduce new "QObject" components category and rename existing ones to "Def 

I then checked out my master branch:

Lilith:Manager KelSolaar$ git checkout master

Previous HEAD position was 4998430... Introduce new "QObject" components categorie and rename exising ones to "Default" and "QWidget".

Switched to branch 'master'

And I finally merged using the commit hash:

Lilith:Manager KelSolaar$ git merge 49984303037e970d637161

Updating 141bc69..4998430

Fast-forward

src/manager/component.py | 2 +-

...